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In 2001, Robert Downey Jr. was found wandering the streets of Los Angeles barefoot and, in the words of one report, “high as a kite.” He was fired from Ally McBeal and shipped off to rehab ... again.

Fourteen years later, he’s one of the highest paid and most successful actors in Hollywood. So, how did this guy go from out-of-control drug addict to one of Men’s Health magazine’s “50 Fittest Men in Hollywood”?

A regimen of martial arts, functional weight training and high-intensity cardio helped. Granted, he was under the tutelage of an exercise physiologist

and had access to L.A.’s top dojos and gyms. But regardless of the size of your bank account, you can’t buy fitness—it has to be earned.

And it’s worth every sweat droplet and minute. Because as Downey Jr. (not to mention plenty of epidemiological studies)

proves, staying fit helps people survive.That’s true even if you’re not an Iron Man. Here are six people

not being paid $100 million for their next picture who have overcome other challenges in their life—some as common as

lack of time and advancing age; others as horrific as combat wounds and sexual abuse. Thanks in large part to regular activity, they have not only survived; they’ve flourished.

The simple message? If they can do it, so can you.

TOP ROW (FROM LEFT): Tracy Stopler, Tao Porchon-Lynch, Dominick Oliviero BOTTOM ROW (FROM LEFT): Kelli O’Laughlin, Michele Wiles, Jose R. Ramos

OPPOSITE: Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man

BY JOHN HANC + PHOTOGRAPHY BY PRESTON SCHLEBUSCH

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4; 33; 20.2.4; 112; 26.2.

Those two sets of numbers will tell you all you need to know about Domi-nick Oliviero’s resilience and determination.

The first set is the number of cancer treatments he had after a tumor was found behind his nasopharynx (the part of the throat that connects to the nose) in May 2011: Four rounds of chemotherapy; 33 rounds of head and neck radiation along with chemo; 20 rounds of radia-tion to the left hip (where the cancer had spread).

The second three numbers are the distances of the Iron-man Triathlon that Oliviero completed in Lake Placid, N.Y.,

in July 2013: a 2.4-mile swim, followed by a 112-mile bike ride and a 26.2-mile run.

“In my mind, I had unfin-ished business,” says Oliviero, whose training for the Lake Placid race in July 2011 was derailed by the discovery of the Stage 4 tumor.

Since he was in good shape—he’d started running, swimming and biking when his younger brother died of lymphoma a decade earlier—Oliviero was deemed a candi-date for aggressive treatment. Hence the multiple rounds of chemo and radiation. But seven months of treatments take a toll, even on a fit guy. He lost almost 40 pounds—and when the treatment was done he

needed a month to wean him-self off the pain medications. Still, Oliviero—an insurance adjuster and the married father of two boys—was back to riding two months after his treatments concluded.

As his checkups and scans continued to show he was can-cer-free, he picked up the train-ing. A year and a half later, with friends and family cheering him on, he crossed the finish line of the long—and long-delayed— Lake Placid race in a time of 12 hours, 52 minutes, 23 seconds.

“While I was in a hospital bed, I wondered if it would ever happen,” he says. “Crossing the finish line was a confirmation if you really have a goal and want something, it’s possible.”

TIME DEMANDSSURVIVING

Kelli O’Laughlin

38 Boston

Doctor, Research Fellow, Teacher, Runner,

Soccer Player

CANCERSURVIVING

Dominick Oliviero

50 Massapequa, N.Y.Ironman Triathlete

Between her nine-hour shifts as head of the emergency department

at Boston’s Brigham and Wom-en’s Hospital, research, teaching responsibilities and grant-writing, Kelli O’Laughlin esti-mates that she works 55 hours a week—and, of course, that’s not counting her responsibili-ties as a mother of two children (boys Tyler, 5, and Cobi, 3) or her periodic, six-week trips to a refugee settlement in Uganda, where she helps medical profes-sionals with HIV testing.

With a schedule like that, who has time to exercise? She

does. Between saving lives, sav-ing the world and putting her kids to bed, she has managed to carve out time to run 25 to 30 miles a week, work out regularly in the gym near her home in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, and in warmer weather, play in a competitive adult soc-cer league with her husband.

“I love running,” she says, “It’s a great stress release. I find the gym gritty and real ... and I love, love, love soccer.”

How does she find the time? One way is by integrat-ing activity into her day. Twice a week, O’Laughlin will run from her home to the hospital:

a distance of 5 miles. “I put my work clothes in a backpack and shower when I get there,” she says. “Making it a part of your day is a great way to fit your exercise into a busy lifestyle.”

Two memorable days in O’Laughlin’s busy life are a powerful testament to that: On April 15, 2013, O’Laughlin was the attending physician on four of the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing. On April 21, 2014, O’Laughlin ran the Boston Marathon, finishing in 3 hours, 57 minutes: a respectable time for a woman who has very little of it.

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Tao Porchon-Lynch has led a life that sounds like a treatment for a

Masterpiece Theatre series: She was born in India, the daughter of a French father and an Indian mother who died giving birth to her. She worked as a fashion model for major French houses. She was active in the French Resistance during World War II. She was signed to MGM Studios in the 1940s and appeared in the movie version of Show Boat and alongside Elizabeth Taylor in The Last Time I Saw Paris.

Exposed to yoga as a child, she began practicing the ancient

One night in July 2007, Tracy Stopler had a dream about climbing

Mount Kilimanjaro.A few days later, a new cli-

ent arrived at her office for nutritional counseling. She asked about his background. “He told me, ‘Last year I climbed Kilimanjaro.’ ”

Call it coincidence, call it fate, call it whatever, Stopler now had a new and timely goal. At that point in her life, she was going through therapy to help her in the ongoing process of dealing with a horrific child-hood tragedy.

At age 9, Stopler, who grew up in the Bronx, was abducted by a man while walking to school. He held her for 3½ hours, forcing her to perform sexual acts. She was released with a threat. “He told me if I told anyone, he knew

Indian mind-body discipline as a young adult. While it may have kept her supple and trim, the real benefits for her were far more profound.

“It opened the door of my heart to something deeper,” she says. “With every breath, I real-ized the power of the universe was right inside me.”

She began teaching yoga informally to friends as she pursued a career in television, traveling between Hollywood, Manhattan and Paris. In 1963, she married William Lynch, an insurance man, and moved to New York state. When her

where I lived and would kill my parents,” Stopler recalls.

As a result, she didn’t report the crime and kept it secret for years. By the time of the dream, she was in her 40s and a suc-cessful nutritionist. Still, as she said, repairing the emotional damage from such a trauma “is an ongoing process.” At that point in her life, the challenge of climbing the 19,341-foot high Tanzanian mountain was as much a route to freedom as a route to fitness—freedom from the demons that haunted her.

To prepare, she followed a rigorous six-month training program: She lifted weights, improved her endurance by using the elliptical machine; and once a month got as used to the feeling of hiking up a mountain as she could, living at sea level. “I walked in the deep sand at Long

husband died in 1982, she opened a yoga studio, the West-chester Institute of Yoga, in White Plains. She still teaches 12 classes a week there.

In 2012, when she was 93, Guinness World Records declared Porchon-Lynch the world’s “Oldest Yoga Teacher.” Three years later, she has no plans to stop. “People tell me, ‘You can’t keep doing this,’ ” she says. “That’s a lot of nonsense. Within you is the power to do. Every morning we need to get up and not be frightened but know that it’s going to be the best day of your life.”

Beach back and forth for miles, carrying a 10-pound backpack,” she says.

The training paid off. In Feb-ruary 2008, as part of a guided group of 12 hikers, she reached the summit of “Kili” in about seven hours.

Seven years later, Stopler continues to stay fit through more conventional means: going to the gym and walking her 3-year-old Havanese, Binah (which means “understanding” in Hebrew).

Like many victims of similar experiences, Stopler still feels anguish about a decision—to get into a stranger’s car—made years ago. But her dream-inspired climb to the top helped. “It was a healing experience,” she says. “It made me have faith in myself again.”

ADVANCED AGESURVIVING

Tao Porchon-

Lynch

96 White Plains, N.Y.

Yoga Instructor

SEXUAL ABUSESURVIVING

Tracy Stopler

50 Plainview, N.Y.Mountain Climber

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In 2005, Jose Ramos was at home, watching the annual broadcast of

the Ironman World Triathlon Championships in Hawaii. “There was this 80-year-old guy who finished,” he says. “And I’m sitting there thinking, If this guy can do an Ironman at 80, no rea-son I can’t do it at age 24.”

Actually, Ramos had what many would consider a good reason for not attempting a tri-athlon—or much else. As a Navy corpsman serving with Marine units in Iraq the previous year, Ramos’ left arm was nearly torn off when he was struck by an insurgent’s rocket near Fallujah. The limb was later amputated an inch below the elbow.

Watching the Ironman motivated him to start train-ing. Doing so, however, meant addressing special challenges facing him in each of the disciplines.

Forget the glamour and grace, the artistry and adulation. For profes-

sional ballerinas, there is one constant in life: pain.

“At some point in their career, every dancer is faced with an injury they have to overcome, which makes them reevaluate their work ... and their life,” says Michele Wiles, who has been dancing since she was 10.

For Wiles, it was a series of injuries going back years, to her time with the American Ballet Theatre. “When I was 25, I was given the soloist and principal load, and that’s when things started to break down,” she says. Stress fractures in her feet and hips, bulging disks in her lower back, crippling calf spasms: All were overuse injuries that would be expected in the physically

He learned to swim while breathing only on one side and developed a stronger kick “to give me extra balance and push.”

While he could ride with a prosthetic, allowing him to hold both handlebars, he had to modify his bike to allow him to shift gears and brake with his right hand.

Since he runs without a pros-thetic arm, he also had to learn how to be better balanced and more efficient on his feet.

Then there were the transi-tions from each event to the next, which in a triathlon are done as fast as possible to save seconds. “I still lose a lot of time putting on my helmet and putting on my running shoes,” he says. “It’s hard to do with one arm.”

In 2013, he finally achieved his goal of doing an Ironman distance triathlon. Ramos com-pleted the event—a 2.4-mile

demanding, high-impact disci-pline to which Wiles had devoted her life. “At the Met, I’d do a principal role, which required me to be in all three acts, then a two-hour break, then another two-hour performance in the evening. It was just nonstop.”

In 2011, Wiles left to form her own company. The injuries per-sisted. “Even just standing, I was in pain,” she recalls.

Around that time she met Marjorie Liebert, who teaches barre-à-terre—a series of move-ments that parallel classical ballet barre exercises, as well as some similar to Pilates and yoga, but are done while lying on the floor. Proponents say it helps increase balance and flex-ibility, improves posture and enhances muscle endurance without creating bulk.

swim, 112-mile bike ride and 26.2-mile run—in Cozumel, Mexico, in an outstanding time of 10 hours, 59 minutes, 39 seconds.

Ramos is now training to qualify for the 2016 Paralympics. As he prepares, he faces chal-lenges other than his disability. A civilian employee of the Department of Defense, Ramos must juggle 15 to 20 hours of training per week with his job and family—he and his wife have two sons, ages 5 years and 6 months.

Through the Semper Fi Foundation—a nonprofit orga-nization that helps provide support for veterans who have suffered serious war wounds—Ramos also speaks to recently injured veterans.

“I tell them it doesn’t mean you can’t do what you want to do,” he says. “You just need to find a different way of doing it.”

Wiles hit the terre hard—taking daily, two-hour classes with Liebert in her Manhattan studio. “You can lie on the floor and do Marjorie’s class and find muscles you didn’t know you had,” says Wiles. “After I’d worked like that, I felt a bit stronger, in every way.”

Although she is feeling better now and continues to take regu-lar classes, Wiles knows that as long as she continues to dance at a high level, injuries—and her old nemesis, pain—are inevi-table companions.

“You’re always going to have something,” she says. But with a little rest and the help of an appropriate exercise program, “the problems work themselves out faster.”

LOSS OF LIMBSURVIVING

Jose R. Ramos

35 Arlington, Va.

U.S. Navy (Ret.), Triathlete

PAINSURVIVING

Michele Wiles

34 ManhattanArtistic Director and Dancer, Ballet Next; Practitioner of Barre-à-Terre

JUST STARTGETTING FIT ISN’T A FULL-TIME JOB.

“People think it’s a lot harder

to do than it actually is,” says

Columbia University exercise

scientist Carol Ewing Garber,

president of the American

College of Sports Medicine.

“They think, Oh, I need to walk,

and I need to lift weights and I

need to stretch and do yoga ...

how am I going to do all that?”

While those activities are

indeed beneficial, getting started

is simple: 30 minutes of activity

a day, most days. “It doesn’t

even have to be done all at

once,” Garber says. “Surely, you

can find three 10-minute periods

over the course of the day when

you can get up and walk.”

And that’s all you need to do.

No special clothes needed out-

side of sensible shoes. No gym

membership required.

“You don’t have to do a

marathon, you don’t have to do

a triathlon, you can just get out

and walk,” Garber says. What

can be simpler than that?

cdc.gov/physicalactivity/

everyone/guidelines